Click Frenzy survives Mother’s Day test in lead up to Christmas mega-sale

The second coming of the Click Frenzy promo-sale for Mother’s Day was nearly halfway over by Wednesday morning with relatively few hiccups and its creator Grant Arnott made it known with a confident tweet.

By 11pm Tuesday evening, Click Frenzy said it had just under a million clicks to participating retailers and 3.5 million page views. In comparison, at least 15 million page views were reported half way through last year’s sale, but the smaller turnout was part of Arnott’s plan to offer smaller targeted events in the lead-up to the November Christmas shopping mega-sale.

“It’s a Mother’s Day promo and we weren’t sure, we’ve done one and half events in our history so we expected it to be smaller. We got good quality gift shoppers coming through," he told The Australian Financial Review.

Retailers slow

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This time, some of those on the losing end were the retailers who chose not to participate. Harvey Norman’s website crashed within minutes of launching a rival sale, an hour before Click Frenzy’s 7pm start. Discount pharmacist Priceline, which pulled out after participating last year, also saw its website crash.

Both sites were working again Wednesday morning.

A spokeswoman for sleepwear brand Peter Alexander, which took part in Click Frenzy’s Mother’s Day sale, reportedly said their site was running very slowly due to huge demand.

Shoppers on Twitter said the website’s of other retailers participating in the sale were also slow and unresponsive.

The jury is still out on the sales that are on offer.

Google wins

Click Frenzy’s Arnott said Google was also a winner on Tuesday night.

Google’s AdWords, its main advertising product and revenue source, means the sale’s rival retailers would have bid high to compete against the “click frenzy" search query.

“The term Click Frenzy is delivering rivers of gold for Google," Arnott said.